2012 Thoughts

My beautiful and lovely wife, Carla, was adamant that I cobble together some words for my largely neglected blog this week.  Soon thereafter, a good friend, and maybe more importantly, water ski mentor and partner of mine, also inquired about my recent silence.  Ok…ok, I get it.  I never knew anyone really cared what I had to say.

Overall, things are going well.  I am safe and I am in good health.  I’m a bit homesick and miss Carla and the kids.  However, I think I would be a little worried if I didn’t.  The weather in Saudi Arabia has been pretty mild as of late.  It is in the 60s to 70s during the day and then drops in the 40s and 50s at night.  This past week we were subjected to a pretty violent sand/wind storm.

As for my continued integration into Saudi society and culture, well let’s just say that I think you would have to be certifiable to voluntarily want to live here.  Now don’t get me wrong, compared to Iraq this country is very safe and has a solid legal and security structure.  However, the social and religious culture is just ridiculous.  My day starts at about 515 am every morning with the Muslim call to prayer.  They blare this song-like chant of versus out of the Koran for 10 minutes at 100-plus decibels all over Riyadh.  This happens five times a day, the first one coming an hour before sunrise.  It wakes me up every single morning and I just yell “shut up” at the top of my lungs—occasionally with some other colorful language sprinkled in.  My alarm is set for 545 am and I don’t think I’ve ever made it.  Speaking of the call to prayer, according to Saudi law, all businesses are required to close during the prayer time.  As a result, you better have a copy of the published prayer times.  If you go to a business or a restaurant leading up to prayer time, you won’t be allowed in.  The businesses are required to close for about 30 minutes for prayer.   On one occasion we were out and about in Riyadh and decided to visit a restaurant for dinner.  About the time we pulled up and started to head for the door, we heard that bloody call to prayer.  We decided to stand outside and wait it out.   This wasn’t a good idea.  About five minutes into our wait the religious police came by.  Oh, the religious police…

In Saudi Arabia, it isn’t the King or the business owners that have the power; it is the clerics and there minions the Mutawaa (religious police).  They are like Hitler’s Storm Troopers.  Imagine a pack of Jehovah’s Witnesses showing up to chastise you about not falling applicable religious laws.  These guys patrol all public areas.  Making matters worse, these guys dress like they are in Al-Qaida.  They have long beards without a mustache, wear short thobes (white robe/man dress) above their ankles, don’t wear the rings on top of their ghutra (scarf thing on their head), and they carry canes.  They started yelling at us to go pray.  It does no good to argue with these people.  We ended up going and sitting in the truck until the restaurant opened back up.  About two weeks ago, the religious police stopped a family in front of a touristy area in Riyadh.  It was a Saudi mom, dad, and teenage son.  The son’s hair was too long and prevented him from correctly wearing his headscarf.  Consequently, the Mutawaa decided to take matters into their own hands and gave him a haircut right on the street.  When mom and dad tried to step in and intervene the Mutwaa beat them—literally—with the sticks/canes they carried.   Only in Saudi Arabia…

As you probably know, when the Saudi women are in public they have to be covered.  They wear an abaya that covers their entire body and a hood that only exposes their eyes.  We call them ninjas because they look like Japanese ninjas all decked out in black.  Try going to a mall and just seeing a sea of black ninjas.  Recently, there was an article in the Saudi press that suggested that Saudi women should have to wear a new hood that covered their eyes.  According to the author, some women were making their eyes too provocative with makeup and it was going to result in prostitution.  After I read it, I could only shake my head.  I could go on and on with this stuff…

I’ve concluded that the Saudis dislike labor and work more than any people on Earth.  I know Americans aren’t wild about doing manual labor and we normally hire it out to our friends from Central and South America.  But I swear, if a Saudi could hire an Indian or Bangladeshi to walk for them they would!  Furthermore, these people have go to be the luckiest country on earth.  If it wasn’t for their incredible oil reserves in the Eastern Province they would still be living in tents and tending their goats.  Instead, they live in these incredible villas and drive every manner of luxury car you can think of all because of the oil.  There are no taxes here.  All of the government’s revenues come from oil sales.

I was talking to a U.S. Army officer the other day.  He is here as an advisor to the Saudi Army.  He told me that he recently had to teach the Saudis a basic class on mission planning.  He spent a week teaching this class to a bunch of mid-level officers.  At the end of the week, the Saudis were supposed to plan a hypothetical mission and brief it to their commander.  They couldn’t do it.  Again, he was teaching them just basic organizational and planning skills.  The point is, we have allowed them to become “too big to fail.”  Much like we did to our banks and auto manufacturers and had to bail them out.  I have no doubt that if any country tried to do anything to Saudi Arabia we would have to intervene on their behalf.  Funny, they know it too and frequently say as much.

In other news, I’m still trying to get my thesis published.  For those of you that don’t know, while I was in grad school last year I wrote a thesis on the impact of the Russian depopulation on national security.  Within the past few weeks, I had two scholars agree to read and assess my work.  I’m sure it didn’t hurt that NIU agreed to pay them to do it.  One guy works for the U.S. Census Bureau and the other for a D.C.-based think tank.  That said, assuming they do provide me a review, NIU is going to publish a portion of my thesis in either an ad hoc product, or shop for a journal or periodical willing to do it—pretty cool.

While this isn’t official or in concrete, I was informally told that I will be headed to the Pentagon after I finish my tour here in the Kingdom.   I was kind of holding out hope that I would be headed back to DIA at Bolling AFB.  However, the Pentagon will do me just fine.  My organization’s headquarters was recently relocated from Andrews AFB to Quantico MCB due to the BRAC.  As a result, I’ll take the commute to the Pentagon over Quantico.  I guess I’ll have to figure out whether it is better to take the Marc Train or the Metro…decisions…decisions.

All of my guys are doing well.  I lead a team of 20 people and on any given day, I have people all over the country.  By and large, my military guys are pretty easy to deal with.  The bur under my saddle always seems to be the two translators I have.  As you probably know, my Arabic speaking isn’t too good.  As a result, we employ government contractors to translate for us.  I have two guys that are in there 60’s and are “hyphenated Americans.”  That means, they immigrated to the States at some point in their lives.  Obviously, they have there own quirks and issues.  Unbelievably, these guys get paid a six-figure salary to translate.  Other than being able to translate, they have no other skills or education.  They take jobs with the U.S. Government overseas because they can’t find work in the States.  Sadly, they are separated from their families for very long periods of time.  Anyways, day in and day out, there is always some issue or catfight with these two.  It was the same when I was in Iraq, but it gets old playing referee.

Where does that leave us? Well, I’m creeping up on the halfway point of this assignment.  I’m scheduled to return home for a three-week vacation around mid-May.  Hopefully, we’ll have some good weather for water skiing, raft ups, and trips into Annapolis.  Carla and I are making plans on how we are going to demolish our kitchen and install something totally brand new, more open, modern, and warm.  In our whirlwind of a first year in the house, the kitchen was about the only room we didn’t tackle.  Considering it hasn’t been updated since the early 1990s, it is due.

I hope that each of you is doing well.  I would love to hear from you.  My email address is brian.sharman@gmail.com

I’ll leave you with this off-color joke that I recently heard that sort of anecdotally captures Saudi society: four newborn babies were resting in the pediatrics ward of a Saudi hospital.  There was German baby, Jewish baby, Saudi baby, and an Indian baby.  The German baby shouted out “Heil Hitler” and gave a salute!  As a result, the Jewish Baby violently lost control of his bowels, which resulted in a big mess.  The Saudi baby looked at the Indian baby and said, “get over there and clean up that mess!”

Money, Power, and Goats

Well, it has been a few weeks since I have captured anything in this blog.  Since my last entry, I have had quite a lot of new experiences and things to ponder…

First, the Saudis have got to be some of the luckiest people on the planet!  Consider that only a century ago they were just some livestock herders that wandered across the desert—literally!  Then in the 1930s and 1940s, huge reserves of oil were discovered by American oil explorers in Saudi Arabia.  Saudi has some of the largest oil reserves in the world and is usually first or second in oil production (they trade places with Russia frequently in oil exports).  Because of the revenues generated from the oil production, there are not any taxes here in the “Kingdom.”  Further, the large influx of capital coupled with the desire of the Royal Family to make Saudi an international player, has resulted in some significant social cleavages in Saudi society.  Imagine taking a culture rooted in the Middle-Ages and giving them uncapped wealth and access to any kind of twenty-first century technology (weapons, telecommunications, bio-medical) and it is no wonder Saudi is having significant issues with terrorism.  Osama bin Laden was from Saudi (although, his family originally came from Yemen—a failed state) and 16 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi.  (As an aside, rumor has it that the Saudis were convinced that the U.S. would condone a retaliatory strike against the Saudis for 9/11.  Specifically, they were certain some Americans would fly a commercial airliner into the Saudi Tower in Riyadh (looks like a big bottle cap opener).

As I’ve been travelling throughout Saudi, I’ve concluded that despite our issues with their religion and support for Islamic extremism, we need to sustain strong bi-lateral relations with the Saudis.  Having said that, I’m sure most people would read that statement and think “oh sure, we need their oil.”  Well, actually the U.S. imports more oil from Canada and Mexico than from Saudi.  However, as Saudi leads OPEC, any instability in Saudi production has the potential to impact market prices and cause prices to rise at the marketplace (the F-150 and MasterCraft use a lot of gas!).  The oil issue is important, but it is not what I’m talking about.  If you took a ride through the streets of Riyadh you would think you were riding through Detroit!  I have never seen so many GM SUVs anywhere in all my life.  I cannot fathom how GM is in the red based on how many GM SUVs I’ve seen here: Escalades, Suburbans, Tahoes, Trailblazers.   You see plenty of Fords and Chryslers as well, but every third vehicle is a GM SUV. 

In addition, the Saudi thirst for American military weapons systems is insatiable.  The Saudis are not very keen on putting stock in the abilities of their people.  In fact, most Saudis are lazy.  They are all either pencil thin or big and dumpy.  Things like fitness and gyms aren’t systemic here like in the U.S.  Instead, the Saudis would rather use their immense wealth to purchase Western and American military hardware to offset their “challenged” military personnel.  Further, the Saudis don’t just buy the weapons systems (i.e. a fighter plane or a tank), they buy maintenance packages and American advisors to imbed with their military units for years to teach and guide their folks how to use the equipment.  By now, you should be thinking major dollar signs for the U.S. economy! 

The Saudis have incredible wealth and rival Americans for consumerism.  Although they wear their traditional Islamic garb, they are outfitted with expensive watches, iPhones, jewelry, etc.  I saw a guy with a gold plated iPhone the other day!  So back to my original point, we need these folks!  We need them to spend their oil money on our goods.  When they buy our goods, it pays salaries, it pays taxes, and it helps drive up our GDP.  Further, although we spend billions of dollars on their oil, we recoup a lot of that money by selling them our automobiles, consumer electronics, food stock, heavy equipment, school buses (yes, I see yellow blue bird buses on the road here!).  Being the international relations geek that I am, I know that the most significant type of power is economic power (there are three: economic, military, and soft).  

Speaking of types of power, American soft power is really having an impact here in Saudi.  If you drive through main street Riyadh, you will see the Outback steakhouse, Dairy Queen, Pizza Hut, Applebees, Chilis, the Apple Store, Toys R Us, Safeway grocery store, etc.  These people want access to American goods.  Moreover, they like American music, television, and want to be educated at our universities.  I recently visited a young Saudi Prince in his home and sat with him in his “man cave.”  He was probably in his mid-twenties and had attended college in the U.S. and received an M.B.A.  On his ginormous flat screen TV he was watching “Ice Road Truckers” on the History Channel.  He told me he loved the History and Discovery Channels—I had to chuckle.  While Saudi is an extremely conservative country and has many human rights violations, it is important to recognize that they have not had their religious reformation yet.  The more these folks attend our schools, watch our shows, and buy our goods, the more it increases the likelihood of them modifying their ideals to more fall in line with ours.  Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor will this…

Speaking of human rights—wow—there might as well be slavery in this country.  As I’ve mentioned there is immense wealth in this country.  The Royal Family is trying to “keep up with the Jonses” so to speak with respect to construction.  In the neighboring United Arab Emirates construction has been booming in places like Dubai.  Not to be out done, the Saudis are keeping up.  At present, an American architect (too bad it isn’t my good friend Tim Hutcheson) is working on building the world’s tallest building in Jeddah (Saudi city on the Red Sea).  Buildings are flying up all over the country.  There are huge shopping malls that rival any American mall, apartment complexes, restaurants, hotels (Ritz Carlton, etc).  To fuel all of this construction, the Saudis use foreign labor.  Well, if you think Mexican migrant workers are treated badly in the U.S., you should visit Saudi.  Indians, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Sri Lankans, etc., are brought in on work visas.  They sign a contract and are paid the equivalent of like $4 USD a day to work long days in intense heat doing construction in extremely unsafe conditions—there is no OSHA here.  I saw some worker on what appeared to be three 30 foot extension ladders taped and tied together end-to-end.  Yes, some guy up 90 feet in the air on three ladders held together with string and duct tape—scary!  At night, these labor workers live in 1 to 2 bedroom apartments with 40-50 other workers.  They literally sleep side-by-side on the floors.  Yet, the earnings they can make here is more than they can in their native countries so they do it and send the money home to support their families.  As you traverse the country, there definitely is a class system.  Saudis and Westerners are at the top.  If a Westerner wrongs a Saudi it could be a sticky situation.  If a Westerner wrongs a migrant worker (robs, kills, assaults), nobody cares.

By and large, most of the Saudis I’ve interacted with have been hospitable and engaging.  They are intelligent and have a lot nationalistic pride.  This is in stark contrast to my time in Iraq where I found a lot of ignorant and anti-Iraq people.  So far I’m a month in and things could be a lot worse!  However, I stay away from the ones with the short thobes (white robe) and long beards—they are the ones prone to extremism.

Aside from all of my observations and thoughts regarding Saudi relations with the U.S., I’ve been busy trying to guide a team of men to accomplish an important mission.  While I cannot go into great detail, my mission is to collect and develop information which will safeguard U.S. personnel—primarily DoD—living in the Kingdom.  My team is comprised of folks from 25-65 years of age.  I have Egyptians and Lebanese in addition to Americans.  It has been challenging trying to establish organizational goals and standards.  Fortunately, my deputy has been very supportive and helpful.  While we have much work to do, things are progressing well.  However, it is far from perfect so I will have to keep chipping away each and every day.

I’ve been trying to finish a book called Inside the Belly of the Beast about the U.S. Ambassador to Germany during Hitler’s rise to power.  The non-fiction work follows Ambassador Dodd and his daughter during the Nazi rise to power.  It has been very interesting and scary all the same.  I’d recommend it if you’re looking for a book.

My beloved Miami Dolphins are falling apart!  I’m starting to think it is me.  When I was in Iraq in 2007-2008, they went 1-15.  At present, they are 0-4 and starting quarterback Chad Henne was just lost for the season due to injury.  I feel certain coach Tony Sparano will be replaced before the season ends.  What a wreck this franchise has become since the end of the Don Shula-Dan Marino era in the 1990s.

Speaking of football, I’m doing pretty well in the Ben Oaks Fantasy Football League (BOFFL).  I’m tied for first with a 3-1 record!  Although I had a valiant loss to Drew Burn’s Banshees, I’ve managed to vanquish Mike and Collin Hackett’s Slacketts, Pat Murray’s Miller Light Express, and Gary Patenaude’s Al-Samwah Patsies.  I’m playing Mr. Sarcasm’s (Mike Murray) Pelotas Rojas this week.  Hopefully, I can stay on the winning roll I’ve established over the past three weeks.

Aside from spending long hours working six days a week, I’ve been getting in some good workout time at the gym and have even found a racquetball partner.  This has been a nice stress reliever.  Further, once it cools off, I’m hoping to hit one of the many golf courses I keep hearing about here in Riyadh.  Although, I cannot fathom how much water it must take to maintain an 18-hole golf course in the middle of desert.

Well, one month down and eleven to go.  If not sooner, I’m hoping to come home for three weeks over Memorial Day Weekend 2012.  I sure do miss Carla, Bree, Cody, and Hunter (our Boxer dog)…

I’ll leave you with this last thought.  As I was riding down the Saudi highway the other day, I looked over to an adjacent SUV to observe a Saudi family traveling with their family pet.  You might think this pretty typical and conjure images of Mr. and Mrs. Jones riding in the front seat with Jimmy, Sally, and Rover (dog) riding in the back seat driving down I-95 to Walt Disney World.  Well in my case, there was a Saudi man driving, the Saudi woman and daughter were riding in the backseat, and the family goat was riding shotgun!! LOL!!!  I told Carla we might have some new seating arrangements when I get home.   

Travels and Settling

At the prodding of several friends, and the tongue lashing I took from Carla for failing to capture anything I did in Iraq in 2007-2008, I've decided to keep a blog for this year.  Obviously, I borrowed the title from a famous film.

Travels:

In my experience the coming and going to a new assignment is always the worst part--particularly the going.  Due to my lack of specificity, the travel folks arranged for me to depart from Dulles Airport rather than BWI.  Dulles is about 60 miles from our home in Severna Park and it took us about 2.5 hours to drive from home to the airport around the beltway.  BWI on the other hand is about 10-15 minutes away.  Fortunately, some worldly people such as my uncle, Tom Bateman, and neighbor, Dave Vincent, suggested I leave my house plenty early to arrive at Dulles very early due to the heavy traffic we would likely encounter along the way.  Carla, Cody, and I decided to leave the house at 2pm on Friday, September 9, 2011, after I did a final walk around and said good-bye to our dog Hunter (Bree stayed at school and didn't want to go).

My flight wasn't departing until 10pm so we decided to visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and get some dinner.  We arrived at the museum with about 45 minutes to walk around before closing.  We walked Cody around and looked at the space shuttle and some other aircraft.  Of course, Cody was more concerned with getting something from the gift shop.  How could I say no considering I was getting ready to leave him for 365 days?  We bought him a model space shuttle and some moon sand.  During our visit to the gift shop the museum closed and we left to find some dinner.

We found a Longhorn Steakhouse and that is where Carla wanted to eat.  At about this time my stomach was doing cartwheels.  I realized this would be the last time I would share a meal with my family for several months.  When the waitress came to take our order I ordered a cup of french onion soup and an ice water--I took two bites of the soup.  I told Carla I wasn't feeling very well.  In fact, I had to get up and go to the bathroom where I promptly got sick! Unbeknownst to me, Cody had followed me into the bathroom, went into the adjacent stall, got on the floor, and climbed under and grabbed my leg.  It scared the heck out of me and I'm sure I jumped 5 feet in the air.  Cody thought this was hilarious.  After a trip to the sink, Cody and I made our way back to the table and finished dinner with Carla.  Following dinner, we made a trip to CVS to get something to settle my stomach.  As an aside, I was not this physically distressed when I left for Iraq in 2007 and I was going into a team where two of our guys had been killed in the prior month to my arrival!

We made it to the airport and said a very teary and sad good-bye.  I think Cody took it the hardest.  Then I went inside and got checked in.  Of course, when I got to security I got pulled out of line and got a "special" check of my person--lucky me.  About the time I got to the gate my stomach actually felt a lot better.  Unfortunately, when I got to the gate the representative from the airline said the plane was having mechanical issues and we might not depart on time.  Seeing as we were flying trans-Atlantic, a properly functioning plane was pretty important I thought!  After two hours of sitting at the gate and wondering if we were going or staying, the flight was cancelled and there were no further flights until the next day.  Great!  After a gut wrenching day this was just what I needed, and it got better because I realized I got to do it all over again the next day!

Since the flight was completely full (125 passengers) we had to return to the departure area of the airport for assistance in rebooking.  It was almost 11pm at this point.  Seeing as I didn't want to be last out of 125 people to see the 8-10 booking agents, I started sprinting through the airport!  After 10 minutes of running, escalators, and a subway ride, I was first to the desk.  Between heavy breathing from running through the airport, I told the lady helping me I didn't care when the new flight took off, but it had to be out of BWI--I wasn't doing another 2.5 hour car ride to go 60 miles.  About this time I called Carla and told her my flight had been cancelled.  I considered getting a hotel or getting a taxi.  I decided against the hotel as I wanted to spend every minute with the family that I could.  Carla was convinced no taxi would take me to Severna Park from Dulles.  So, about the time she pulled in the driveway at home, and dealt with Cody having a pee-pee accident due to the stress of the good-bye, she had to turn around and drive the 60 miles to come back and get me.  Yes, I know that I have the BEST wife any man could ever hope for.  I got my flight all sorted out and got booked out of BWI for the next evening--thank goodness!  I waited for a while at the curb and Carla eventually found me.  I jumped in the driver's seat and drove the 60 miles back to the house I had left 8 hours earlier.  We put 240 miles on Carla's Expedition for me to throw up, Cody to pee himself, and all of us to shed some tears.

The next day I woke up and tried to stay busy because my flight was not until the evening.  Cody and I mowed the yard together, played some Wii, and just kept a low profile.  I did not want to run into any neighbors and have to explain why I was still home multiple times.  Fortunately, Chris Hutcheson stopped by the house to see Carla and I was able to say good-bye to her.  She was tied up the day before and I did not have an opportunity to say bye.  At about 4pm we loaded up in the car after I said good bye to Bree and Hunter--again--and set out for BWI.  My stomach was doing some flips, but only slightly.  I was too agitated about missing the prior night's flight to have as strong of a physical reaction as I did the day prior.  Moreover, the guy I was replacing in Saudi Arabia was waiting for me to arrive so he could depart for home to see his family.  I breezed through the check-in and security at BWI, the plane boarded on time, and I finally departed my beloved USA...

The flight from BWI to Frankfurt was fairly comfortable, except the woman sitting next to me blew her nose every 10 minutes.  It was not quiet or subtle, in fact it sounded like a fog horn!   I tried to sleep several times only to awaken by her frequent nose blowing!  Further, I was in the middle seat in a row of three and I was almost climbing into the lap of the woman sitting on the other side of me (away from nose blower) in an effort to avoid germs and contracting whatever nose blower was dispersing all over the plane (fortunately, I haven't gotten sick!).  I finally made it to Frankfurt after eight hours a little jet lagged, but safe and sound nonetheless.  I had a four hour lay over before the next leg from Frankfurt to Riyadh.  After walking around, dosing off, and reading, the flight finally boarded.  The plane was only partially full and I had a row to myself!  No nose blowers.

The plane finally touched down in Riyadh at around 9pm local.  I was dreading trying to navigate the immigration lines, find my luggage, and my ride!  To my great surprise, two of my guys and our senior translator were waiting for me as I came up the ramp with a representative of one of the Saudi Princes (there are hundreds of Princes).  They whisked me to the VIP section of the airport and I breezed through immigration in mere minutes.  My guys grabbed my bags (they all made it!) and escorted me to one of our SUVs waiting curbside to head to our compound.  Being the new commander in town has its perks apparently!

I travelled half way around the world and was tired, hungry, and in desperate need of a shower.  However, I think I left a piece of my heart on the curb at Dulles 48 hours prior.  I've been in stressful situations before, but I've never had a physical reaction like the one I had the first night I was supposed to leave.  I hope this next 12 months goes fast because I already miss my family.

Keep checking in, more to come....